Protein expression regulation

Aquaporins (AQP) are a family of integral membrane proteins expressed in all organisms and play a fundamental role in the regulation of water transport into and out of cells. 

Dunlop [18] proposed a model for sub-lytic effects in plant cells, based on the same principles, but including four properties postulated to be of particular importance in these systems, namely calcium ion flux, osmo-regulation, cell-cell contact/aggregation and stress protein expression. Of these factors, osmo-regulation (and its inter-relationship with the cell wall) and aggregation patterns, in particular, distinguish plant cells from mammalian cell systems. 

Wang JM, Johnston PB, Ball BG, Brinton RD. The neurosteroid allopregnano-lone promotes proliferation of rodent and human neural progenitor cells and regulates cell-cycle gene and protein expression. J Neurosci 2005 25 4706-18. 

Other HIV proteins include regulator of viral expression (Rev), negative effectors (Nef), viral protein R (Vpr), viral protein U (Vpu), viral infectivity factor (Vif) and transactivator protein (Tat). These proteins are instrumental in viral mRNA expression, viral replication and transactivation, viral release and maturation, viral infection, and maintenance of viral transcript activation and expression, respectively (Tripathi and Agrawal 2007). 

Iron homeostasis in mammalian cells is regulated by balancing iron uptake with intracellular storage and utilization. As we will see, this is largely achieved at the level of protein synthesis (translation of mRNA into protein) rather than at the level of transcription (mRNA synthesis), as was the case in microorganisms. This is certainly not unrelated to the fact that not only do microbial cells have a much shorter division time than mammalian cells, but that one consequence of this is that the half-life of microbial mRNAs is very much shorter (typically minutes rather than the hours or often days that we find with mammals). This makes it much easier to control levels of protein expression by changing the rate of specific mRNA synthesis by the use of inducers and repressors. So how do mammalian cells... 

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